On the television the next night, they learned that the research institutes were close to a cure. With Martial Law declared and Civil Rights rescinded, the CDC had turned the southern prisons into laboratories, and begun experimenting on convicts. In thick Brooklyn-ese, Rosie Perez, the fill-in WPIX news anchor, announced that the government had discovered a twenty-three-year-old convict who was immune.
“Isn’t that the lady from the lottery movie?” Gladys asked. Conrad shushed her by putting his hand over her mouth, and they’d sat erect and tense as metal tuning forks while a still photo of their daughter had illuminated the television. She’d looked younger and more pissed off than he’d expected.
“They shot her full of the virus and she’s not sick?” Gladys whispered. “Thank the Great Buddha. My baby, I love you so much. Momma loves you,” she told the angry woman on the glowing screen while Conrad inspected his hands, because the sight of his wife’s tears, when he was helpless to console her, was intolerable.
Then Rosie returned, and spoke off teleprompter. “So, basically, we’re killing a buncha prisoners even though there’s like, a million zombies out there we could capture and test instead. So if this Delia Wilcox winds up curing everybody, then I guess it was worth it. But if she doesn’t…” Rosie had looked directly into the camera, through the screen, at Conrad, and he’d felt like someone who’s done wrong, and been caught.
“Think about it, people! They can’t see and they can’t hear but they’ll still chase you twenty miles, ’cause it’s not your skin these fuckin’ things want. This virus eats souls. That’s not gonna be me. Is it gonna be you?”
Rosie glared. Connie thought about Delia, and the dog Barkley, and that day the ocean met the sky. Then Rosie produced a gun, pressed it to the side of her head while the cameraman shouted, thought better of her strategy, placed the gun in her mouth, and fired. The program went offline.
Conrad and Gladys got close enough to press their faces to the snowy screen, just in case Delia came back. She didn’t. After a half-hour, a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Videos played. Somebody’s cheeky monkey stole a bunch of bananas from a grocery store. Then the signal went out, the television was gone, and America died, just like that.
That night, Gladys shook him awake. The bed was just a mattress on the floor—he’d broken apart the cedar frame, along with the rest of the wood furniture, and nailed it against the windows and doors. They were living on saltines and defrosted vegetables. Some days it felt like camp, but mostly it didn’t.
“I’m dying, Connie,” Gladys said.
His belly filled with cold and his heart slowed as it pumped. “You’re healthy as a cow, Gladys,” he told her, though in fact she was sweating now, her breath shallow, and he understood with increasing alarm that there was something he’d forgotten.
“It’s my heart. We’re out of the digitalis.”
“I’ll get it right now,” he answered. The digitalis—why hadn’t she reminded him?
“It’s no good, Connie,” she said, and he realized then that she hadn’t been too upset to help dig Adam’s plot: she’d been too sick. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to risk it.”
“Stop this talk,” he answered, standing now, in the dark. Orange light played through the cracks in the windows, because something out there was on fire. “I know a little high school chemistry. We’ll cook it on the kitchen stove. What’s digitalis made of?”
“No, Con. I’m on my way, and you’ve got to promise me something.”
He ran his hands along the sheets, and found that they were wet with her sweat. “I won’t promise you anything. You tricked me, you coward.”
Gladys shook her head. “Stop that, Connie. Now promise. I won’t rest peacefully knowing she’s alone. Locked up, even, with no one to remember to feed her. Remember the time with the blood? She drank it all straight out of the freezer bag. Maybe there’s a reason she ran off and it wasn’t just the drugs. We were wrong to give up on her like that. You’ve got to promise to see what’s become of her.”
He looked at his wife, whose complexion had turned orange with the fire. Over these last thirty-nine years, she’d grown wrinkled and fat and timid. He hated her whiny voice, and her old lady stink, and her sagging tits. Mostly, he hated her worthless ticker. “I’m empty, Gladys. I don’t love anything anymore. Not even you.”
She shook her head in what he would later remember as amusement. You’re married to somebody that long, you know better than to pretend like love is a fish. “Oh shut up and find her, you big baby!”
In the morning he dressed her in her comfy bathrobe and plastic-soled slippers, then cut off her head just in case, and buried her next to the boy and the dog. By noon he was gone. Walking south, toward Delia.
III.
He Finds the Dog